Recent quotes:

Jamie Dimon on Trump, Taxes, and a U.S. Renaissance - Bloomberg

I think it’s a reset moment for how businesses are going to be treated: 145 million people work in America; 125 million of them work for private enterprise; 20 million work for government—firemen, sanitation, police, teachers. We hold them in very high regard. But you know, if you didn’t have the 125 you couldn’t pay for the other 20. Business is a huge positive element in society. But for years it’s been beaten down as if we’re terrible people. So I think it’s a good reset.

How Shale Gas Is Re-energizing American Manufacturing | US News Opinion

Those claims that America doesn't produce anything anymore just aren't true. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. manufacturing output reached an all-time high of $2.17 trillion in 2015, making last year the best in at least a generation by all relevant measures of economic performance: output growth, employment gains and profits. In fact, today the U.S is the world's number two manufacturing nation, ranking behind only China. Also, consider that in 2014, the U.S. produced more manufacturing output than the combined output of Germany, South Korea, India, Italy and France.

Book Review: Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life by Michael Novak | Foundation for Economic Education

Novak captures the ultimate and critical purpose of the business enterprise: Business is about creating goods and services, jobs and benefits, and new wealth that didn’t exist before. In contrast to today’s predominant views, Novak illustrates clearly that business is neither morally bankrupt nor amoral. Instead, business is a morally serious enterprise that requires moral conduct. Indeed, since he rightly identifies business as the single largest institution of civil society under the project of self-government, Novak concludes that the moral health of society, therefore, depends to a great extent on the moral character of business leaders.

The Miracle in a Coffee Cup - WSJ

The author’s morning coffee is grown in an Ethiopian village, trucked to a port in Djibouti, and then shipped through the Suez and Panama canals—more than 10,000 nautical miles. “The average American coffee-drinking household,” he writes, after doing a bit of cocktail-napkin math, “. . . never has less than 572,000 miles of travel pass through its coffeemaker every year.”
Domino’s Pizza, he says, is really in the logistics business, funneling inputs—pineapple from Thailand, boxes from Georgia, salt from Minnesota—through 16 distribution points in the U.S.

Meet the government guys standing up for franchise workers and contractors - The Washington Post

"He said, 'I don’t understand why you guys are so upset about this,’” recalls IFA President Robert Cresanti, of Griffin’s presentation. “I think when I walked away from this thing, in my head the phrase that kept ringing was, 'this guy is really well intentioned, but we can’t afford to live in a world where intentions matter more than results.' And the result here is the destruction of the franchise industry. And it is slow, and it is not seismic, it’s just piece by piece by piece."

How some Yelpers are holding restaurants hostage - The Washington Post

“Getting mad about a bad Yelp review is like getting mad at people at an S&M convention for beating each other,” says Derek Brown, founder of the Columbia Room and three other bars in Shaw. “The medium is designed to be a complaint factory.”

Rising Corporate Minimum Wages Are Not a Liberal Victory | American Encore

In short, equating voluntary decisions by major corporations to good national policy is perilous. Just because Walmart and McDonald’s can quickly afford to respond to the pressure exerted by their other Fortune 500 competitors in the labor market doesn’t mean small businesses can as well. Assuming they can by increasing the statutory minimum wage will destroy economic opportunity for small business employers and employees alike. It is certainly a good thing that these major companies are raising employee pay, but we must take careful notice of how and why they are doing so. Higher wages across the economy are spurred on by innovation. Companies that can increase efficiency and lower costs can compete for more talented labor with higher wages. Trying to artificially impose the byproduct of entrepreneurial ingenuity with broad government mandates will be counterproductive to the goal of rising incomes as these policies destroy the cradle of innovation that is small business.

Wal-Mart’s Capitalist Payday - WSJ

Critics of capitalism promote the myth that businesses will always pay the lowest wage they can get away with. But it’s more accurate to say smart capitalists pay the wages they need to keep employees productive and contributing to growth and higher profits. More often than not this means regularly raising pay to avoid losing the best workers. As anyone who has ever hired someone knows, the greatest joy in management life is a reliable employee.

Hate to Fly These Days? It's Consumers' Fault, Too - Bloomberg View

Ultimately, the reason airlines cram us into tiny seats and upcharge for everything is that we're out there on Expedia and Kayak, shopping on exactly one dimension: the price of the flight. To win business, airlines have to deliver the absolute lowest fare. And the way to do that is . . . to cram us into tiny seats and upcharge for everything. If American consumers were willing to pay more for a better experience, they'd deliver it. We're not, and they don't.